Maisie had also become friends with the gardener, who’d been delighted when his role of simply a maintenance gardener had been expanded, and together they’d planned and planted a summer garden.
The
Sonia-and Maisie believed it was not because she was jumping to her brother’s tune but out of genuine affection-had become a good friend.
They shopped together, they lunched together at Cleveland’s trendy pavement cafes, they went to the movies and concerts. They popped in and out of each other’s houses when the whim took them and Maisie was giving Cecelia piano lessons. She often babysat the kids for Sonia, not that they were babies, but she loved it when the stone house with its blue shutters rang with young voices and laughter.
She’d met Liam, Sonia’s husband, and liked him as well as pondering what had separated Sonia from him. Rafe had never gone on to explain further.
Thanks, she had no doubt, to the influence Rafe exercised over his family, even on this occasion his cousin Amelia and his aunt Nancy, the news of her pregnancy was well-received.
She often thought to ask him if they knew who the baby’s father was but, since no one ever mentioned Tim Dixon to her, she gathered that Rafe had kept his own counsel on the subject, so she decided she would do the same. To be honest, it gave her a headache even to think of how that bit of news could be explained.
The Tonga story and its potentially disastrous consequences for Maisie Wallis had never surfaced. As Rafe had predicted, once their marriage had been announced, there was little newsworthiness in it.
In fact, she’d often thought that Maisie Wallis had disappeared, been swallowed up in her new life. She’d even contributed to it-for some reason, she’d never visited Manly, she’d never gone back to see the
She had a music tutor and she’d embarked on her Master’s Degree with enthusiasm.
But now, sitting in front of her piano at seven and a half months pregnant, there was not an ounce of enthusiasm in her for anyone or anything, least of all herself, and she knew precisely why.
It all came under one heading-Rafe. And the fact that that it had been a vain assumption that she’d closed the door on how she felt about him.
He was kind, he took an interest in her interests but she sensed a brick wall between them below the surface and, as she’d once feared, it was hurting her almost unbearably.
He was rarely home, but even when he was in Brisbane he didn’t always sleep at the house, he used the apartment, and that added another torment for Maisie. Did he have a mistress, and if so, could she blame him?
He certainly wasn’t going to want her now that she was heavy, swollen and slow. Who would?
And when she couldn’t control her imagination, she had a mental cast of potential lovers he might chose from, from statuesque brunettes through to creamy, glorious blondes.
If you added to all that blotches of brown pigment on your skin, heartburn that interfered with your sleep and the conviction that this pregnancy was never going to end, it wasn’t easy to feel chipper.
Not even the nursery she and Sonia had decorated, the shopping they’d done for the baby, not even the thought of her child, the lifeline she’d clung to for so long, was helping her because she’d started to question her suitability as a mother.
Who wouldn’t, she thought, when you couldn’t give your baby a father because you’d ignored all the conventions and good sense you’d been brought up with and allowed yourself to be swept off your feet and, if that wasn’t bad enough, when you’d fallen in love with another man not long afterwards?
Was it any wonder Rafe Sanderson viewed her as foolish, if not worse? She was…Although she still hoped and prayed that she hadn’t given away what she felt for him.
She’d also come to the growing realisation that being a single parent was extremely lonely on a mental plane, even leading the cushioned, want-for-nothing life she was living.
Yes, she could talk to Sonia about anything to do with babies and birth but nothing could replace the link she was missing, the spiritual link she needed with the other half of her baby’s creator. Not that Tim Dixon could have ever given her that, she knew; no one could now-that was what made it so lonely.
‘Yoo-hoo! Anyone home?’
Maisie scrubbed her face urgently as Wes stood up and barked once then wagged his tail.
It was Sonia, but despite her bright greeting she looked unwell, even unusually haggard, as she walked into the den that had been converted into a music room.
‘What’s wrong?’ Maisie asked.
‘Nothing! I’m as right as rain.’ She patted Wes then she added rigidly, ‘What I need is a good, stiff drink.’
Maisie opened her mouth, closed it and said, ‘Sit down, I’ll get you one.’
And she did so as fast as she could.
‘Now,’ she handed Sonia a crystal tumbler with a generous tot of brandy in it, ‘what’s wrong?’
Sonia accepted the glass, sipped and choked. ‘Liam’s asked for a divorce,’ she said with tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘And it’s all my fault.’
‘Why?’ Maisie queried gently.
‘Because I’m a fool,’ Sonia said tragically. ‘It’s taken this to make me realise that I drove him away because I’m really cynical about letting anyone get too close to me. I thought I could have Liam yet keep him at arm’s length. I was even convinced,’ she laughed hollowly, ‘that he’d come back after he asked for a separation, it just needed a little time.’
She breathed raggedly then continued, ‘I thought I should always be in command of myself but that led to wanting to be in command of him too on top of,’ she paused and pressed her fingers to her temples, ‘a natural tendency to bossiness anyway,’ she said with bleak honesty.
Maisie sat down on a cushioned footstool in front of her sister-in-law. ‘Oh, Sonia, I’m so sorry. But-why? What made you like that?’
It was Sonia’s turn to scrub her face. ‘When you grow up in a war zone you tend
Maisie’s eyes widened. ‘A war zone? I don’t understand.’
‘My parents had a love-hate relationship that was,’ Sonia shook her head, ‘deeply disturbing, sometimes terrifying as a child living through it. I suppose I took my mother’s side instinctively and subconsciously decided never to put myself in a position as painful as hers.’
She pleated her skirt and shrugged. ‘But, you know, you grow up and you think you’ve put it all behind you-until one day you wake up and realise it caused you to build a fence around your emotions that you can’t seem to break through. Or couldn’t.’ New tears welled. ‘And now it’s too late.’
Maisie put her arms around her.
And she sat deep in thought after Sonia had left.
Were daughters more vulnerable in that kind of situation? In other words, how had his parents’ turbulent relationship affected Rafe? Was he just as cynical in his own way as Sonia?
Did that explain why a man who had so much to offer, you would have thought, had no time for a wife and family?
What had he said to her once? Something about neither of them, for reasons of their own, viewing love and all the trimmings through rose-coloured glasses…
‘The evidence,’ she murmured aloud, ‘seems to be piling up against him ever falling in love with you, Maisie, if that’s what’s in your secret heart-and of course it is! Not that this makes any difference. Tim Dixon was always going to effectively scotch that possibility but why does this news disturb me so much?’
It was a question she couldn’t answer, she could only acknowledge that it lay heavily on her mind.
It was to be a day of bad news.
Rafe came home earlier than he usually did on a weekday, and found her in the kitchen making dinner.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked as he pulled off his tie and flicked open the top button of his shirt.
‘I am concocting,’ she said brightly-she’d perfected a bright, breezy manner with him, ‘a chicken casserole with Marsala, mushrooms, parsley, capsicum, shallots and that’s about it.’ She waved a hand over the series of bowls containing her colourful ingredients. ‘Oh, and bacon.’
‘Where’s Grace?’ He opened the fridge and took out a can of beer and a bottle of unsweetened apple juice,
